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2013 Man Booker Prize Longlist Announced

The longlist, or ‘Man Booker Dozen’, of the 2013 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is announced today, Tuesday 23 July 2013.

This year’s longlist of 13 books was selected by a panel of five judges chaired by academic, critic and writer Robert Macfarlane. The longlist has been selected from 151 titles, of which 14 were called in by the judging panel.

The 2013 longlist is:

Author Title (Publisher)

Tash Aw Five Star Billionaire (Fourth Estate)

NoViolet Bulawayo We Need New Names (Chatto & Windus)

Eleanor Catton The Luminaries (Granta)

Jim Crace Harvest (Picador)

Eve Harris The Marrying of Chani Kaufman (Sandstone Press)

Richard House The Kills (Picador)

Jhumpa Lahiri The Lowland (Bloomsbury)

Alison MacLeod Unexploded (Hamish Hamilton)

Colum McCann TransAtlantic (Bloomsbury)

Charlotte Mendelson Almost English (Mantle)

Ruth Ozeki A Tale for the Time Being (Canongate)

Donal Ryan The Spinning Heart (Doubleday Ireland)

Colm Tóibín The Testament of Mary (Viking)

Robert Macfarlane, Chair of judges, comments:

‘This is surely the most diverse longlist in Man Booker history: wonderfully various in terms of geography, form, length and subject. These 13 outstanding novels range from the traditional to the experimental, from the first century AD to the present day, from 100 pages to 1,000 and from Shanghai to Hendon.’

Represented on the 2013 longlist are authors from Britain, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Canada, Malaysia and Ireland.

Of the 13, two of the authors have appeared on the shortlist before: Jim Crace was shortlisted for the Booker in 1997 for Quarantine (Viking), while Colm Tóibín has been shortlisted twice: for The Blackwater Lightship in 1999 and in 2004 with The Master.

Seven of the 13 authors are women; three are debut authors. Jim Crace is the oldest author on the longlist at 67 and Eleanor Catton is the youngest aged 27.

Four independent publishers make the longlist. Sandstone Press, a small publisher based in Highland Scotland, joins Granta, Canongate and Bloomsbury. Sandstone made the longlist for the first time in 2011, with Jane Rogers’ The Testament of Jessie Lamb.

The judges will meet again in September to decide the shortlist of six books, which will be announced on Tuesday 10 September at a press conference at the Man Group’s head office. The winner of the 2013 prize will be announced at a winner’s ceremony on Tuesday 15 October from London’s Guildhall, an event broadcast by the BBC on BBC News 24 and the 1o o’clock News on BBC One.

The six shortlisted writers are each awarded £2,500 and presented with a specially commissioned, beautifully hand-bound edition of their book. The winner will receive a further £50,000.

Robert Macfarlane, who was previously a member of the judging panel in 2004, is joined on the 2013 Man Booker Prize for Fiction judging panel by: the renowned broadcaster Martha Kearney; critic, academic and prize-winning biographer, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst; broadcaster, classicist and critic, Natalie Haynes and Stuart Kelly, essayist and former literary editor of Scotland on Sunday.

The Man Booker Prize was first awarded in 1969 and 2013 marks its 45th year. Hilary Mantel made history in 2012 when she won the prize for the second time with Bring up the Bodies, as the first woman and the first British author to win the prize twice. She has since gone on to become the first Man Booker author to enter the official UK Top 50 number one spot with the mass-market edition of Bring Up the Bodies.

A full history of the prize, including an interactive timeline and weekly news round-ups, can be found on the Man Booker Prize website – www.themanbookerprize.com.

Robert Macfarlane (Chair) is a Fellow in English at Cambridge University, specialising in contemporary literature, and is well-known both as a critic and writer. He writes regularly on literature, travel and nature for The Guardian and Granta Magazine, among other publications. He is the author of a number of prize-winning, non-fiction books. Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (2003) won The Guardian First Book Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and a Somerset Maugham Award. The Wild Places followed in 2007 and was adapted for television by the BBC. His latest book The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot (2012) has been shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, the Banff Mountain Festival Book Award and The Waterstones Book of the Year Award. He is currently writing a book called Underland, about subterranean worlds.

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst is a biographer and critic who is a Fellow and Tutor in English at Magdalen College, Oxford. He is the author of Becoming Dickens (Harvard UP, 2011), which was awarded the 2011 Duff Cooper Prize, and Victorian Afterlives (OUP, 2002), and has also produced editions of Dickens's Christmas stories, Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, and Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies for Oxford World's Classics. He writes regularly for publications including the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, TLS, Art Newspaper and New Statesman. Radio and television appearances include Start the Week and The Culture Show, and he has also acted as the historical consultant on BBC productions of Jane Eyre, Emma and Great Expectations. He lives in Oxford.

Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster. She writes a column for the Independent, and blogs for the Guardian. Her most recent book, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life, was published on both sides of the Atlantic, and she has spoken on the modern relevance of the classical world everywhere from Cambridge Classics Festival to Chicago Ideas Week. She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4: reviewing for Front Row and Saturday Review, appearing as a team captain on two seasons of Wordaholics, and banging on about Juvenal whenever she gets the chance. She reviews books, films and television for Review Show on BBC2, and was a judge for the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction.

Martha Kearney has developed a reputation as one of the BBC’s most respected journalists. She presents The World At One on Radio Four and The Review Show on BBC2. Being a dedicated apiarist herself, Martha fronted a BBC4 documentary about the desperate plight of the bee. Who Killed The Honey Bee? aired in 2009. In 2011 Martha presented Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait? a BBC2 documentary about the quest to verify the authenticity of a possible portrait of the author. She began her journalistic career in radio for LBC/IRN, before joining Channel Four TV’s respected Week in Politics team. She became political editor of Newsnight in 2000 and has also reported for Panorama. She presented Woman's Hour on Radio Four from 1998 to 2007.

Stuart Kelly is a writer, critic and reviewer. He is the author of The Book Of Lost Books: An Incomplete Guide To All The Books You’ll Never Read and Scott-Land: The Man Who Invented A Nation, which was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Non-fiction Prize and was Radio 4’s Book Of The Week, as well as introductions to several novels. He writes reviews for The Scotsman, Scotland On Sunday, The Guardian and The Times and is a regular guest on BBC Radio Scotland’s book programmes. He was guest selector at the 2010 Edinburgh International Book Festival, curating a strand on fiction and the avant-garde. He is Reader-in-Residence for the MA in Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University, a Board Member for the Society of Scottish Studies in Europe. He lives in the Scottish Borders and is currently working on a book about religion.

Notes to Editors

The 2013 longlist consists of 13 books. The rules state that a longlist of 12 or 13 books – ‘The Man Booker Dozen’ – is to be selected, followed by a shortlist of six. Each year UK publishers may submit two full-length novels written by a citizen of the Commonwealth, the Republic of Ireland or Zimbabwe and published between 1 October 2012 and 30 September 2013. Any title by an author who has previously been shortlisted for the prize may be submitted

In addition, the judges ‘call in’ a number of novels each year: in addition to their main submission, a publisher may submit a list of up to five titles for consideration, accompanied by a justification from the editor. The judges are required to call in no fewer than eight and no more than 12 of these titles

Hilary Mantel won the 2012 Man Booker Prize for Fiction with Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate). The book has now sold over half a million copies in the UK in hard copy alone

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction was first awarded in 1969 and has been sponsored by the Man Group since 2002. The long-term future of the prize was secured in 2011 with the announcement of a renewed 10 year sponsorship from the Man Group. The title ‘Booker Prize’ therefore only applies to prize years 1969 – 2001, before Man Group plc’s sponsorship began. It would be greatly appreciated if you could ensure that your editorial is factually correct by referring to the prize’s full title at least once, if not in the headline, then in your next subsequent mention. For a full history of the prize including previous winners, shortlisted authors and judges visit the website: www.themanbookerprize.com

The Booker Prize Foundation Advisory Committee, which advises on any changes to the rules and on the selection of the judges, represents all aspects of the book world. Its members are:

The Booker Prize Foundation is a registered charity (no 1090049) which, since 2002, has been responsible for the award of the prize. The trustees of the Booker Prize Foundation are former Chairman of Booker plc, Jonathan Taylor CBE (Chair); Lord Baker of Dorking CH; writer, critic and broadcaster, Bidisha; playwright and President of the Royal Literary Fund, Sir Ronald Harwood CBE; former Chair of the British Council and Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, Baroness Kennedy QC; Professor of Creative Writing, Royal Holloway College University of London and former Poet Laureate, Sir Andrew Motion; broadcaster, James Naughtie; biographer, Victoria Glendinning CBE and former Finance Director of Rentokil plc, Christopher Pearce. Martyn Goff CBE, former Man Booker Prize administrator, is President of the Foundation and Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne and Baroness Neuberger are Vice Presidents.

Man is a world-leading alternative investment management business. It has expertise in a wide range of liquid investment styles including managed futures, equity, credit and convertibles, emerging markets, global macro and multi-manager, combined with powerful product structuring, distribution and client service capabilities. At 31 March 2013, Man managed $54.8 billion.

The original business was founded in 1783. Today, Man Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a member of the FTSE 250 Index with a market capitalisation of around $1.6 billion. Man is a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). Man also supports many awards, charities and initiatives around the world, including sponsorship of the Man Booker literary prizes. Further information can be found at www.man.com

Booker is the UK's leading food wholesaler with over 170 branches nationwide. It serves over 350,000 independent businesses

The Booker Prize Foundation has a longstanding partnership with the RNIB, and the Foundation funds the production by RNIB of the shortlist in formats for the visually impaired including braille, giant print and Talking Book

The Booker Prize Archive was given on loan in 2003 to Oxford Brookes University where it now resides. Materials from the archive were displayed for the first time this summer in the University’s new Glass Tank exhibition space. The exhibition was curated by Gallery Manager and Exhibitions Curator Dr Joanna Walker with assistance from Archivist Eleanor Possart and a small team of undergraduate students.